Revision as of 02:04, 11 February 2009

This page describe a step-by-step guide to install Arch Linux on IBM Thinkpad T42. The Arch version used was 2008.06 (Overlord, 2008-06-24). To get more details about the laptop model, visit ThinkWiki[1] page on the T42 is indispensable and makes for easy reference. Informations about how-to proceed a basic Arch Linux installation, please follow up The Beginners Guide prior to follow this document.

Materials (what you'll need):

Internet connection like wired. There are instructions to configure wireless connection below;

FIRST BOOT

Add a user with rights to perform general computing tasks by including the user in the following groups: audio,lp,network,optical,power,storage,video (no comma separation)

$ adduser <login name>

Arch Linux shows the messages that appeared during the boot process. You can remove the first line in /etc/issue file if you wish, which is a "clear screen" escape code.

Add/change mirrors for repositories within /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist before your first upgrade of your system. This will ensure a speedy installation with fewer opportunities for network interference (broken connections, power outages) as ftp.archlinux.org is throttled with a maximum bandwith limit:

$ pacman -Sy pacman
$ pacman -Syu

Assuming an installation from the Core installation disc, reboot the system to initialize and run the newly updated kernel.

Useful DAEMONS

Edit DAEMONS array in /etc/rc.conf to add HAL and fam, remember that the other matters.

Configuring audio card

The Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (known by the acronym ALSA) is a Linux kernel component intended to replace the original Open Sound System (OSS) for providing device drivers for sound cards. Besides the sound device drivers, ALSA also bundles a user space library for application developers who want to use driver features with a higher level API than direct interaction with the kernel drivers.

The alsa-utils package contains the alsamixer userspace tool, which will allow us to configure the sound device from the console. (You may also run alsamixer from an X environment later.)

Install the alsa-utils package:

$ pacman -S alsa-utils

As normal, non-root user, invoke /usr/bin/alsamixer:

# alsamixer

Unmute the Master and PCM channels by scrolling to them with cursor left/right and pressing M. Increase the volume levels with the cursor-up key. (70-90 Should be a safe range.) Some machines, (like the Thinkpad T61), have a Speaker channel which must be unmuted and adjusted as well. Leave alsamixer by pressing ESC.

Because the pm-utils scripts must be run as root, you may want to make the scripts accessible to normal users by running sudo without the root password. To do so, edit the /etc/sudoers file with visudo, for example:

For atheros madwifi driver, use madwifi throught ath_pci module (Package: madwifi). Eventually you may prefer to use the newer module (since kernel 2.6.27) called ath5k. I'll focus on the old version one once its stability and, at least, fully functional with wpa encryption. To folow up instruction to install ath5k, please read this. To load madwifi driver, type:

modprobe ath_pci

If using ath_pci, you may need to blacklist ath5k by adding it to the MODULES= array in /etc/rc.conf, and subsequently prefixing it with a bang (!):

It is pretty standard fare to install these madwifi drivers; consult the main Wireless Setup document for detailed instructions, and if in doubt, always check the ThinkWiki pages[2]. If an Archer has experience with a T42 that uses the Intel PRO wireless card, please feel free to modify this document to inclube information about: